Titus Van Rijn

My next "race" goal is the Titus Van Rijn Invitational - a friendly postal competition where a friend of mine sets a couple of dates between which you run for an hour on a track and send in the distance. I didn't run last year because I was recovering from surgery or the year before because I was sick, probably a precursor to my problems. Other than those two years, I've never run less than 8 miles. I think I have an outside chance at running 8 miles (or at least 12.8k) this year but I need to improve. I ran 14 miles in 1:57:50 back in January. I think I'm probably capable of squeezing out 7.5 miles at present.

I got in a couple of pretty consistent weeks, running 1 hour on Tuesday, 17 mile road run on Thursday, then hill repeats and a mountain run on the weekend. Then this week, I started commuting home from downtown LA on the bike. This turned out to be tougher than I recalled and I didn't do myself any favors in several respects (< 20 pounds pressure in my back tire, crooked seat, etc). Going out 6th street, then Whittier Blvd was pretty much a sprint workout with all of the stop lights and the cars providing motivation. Then I still had to go maybe 15 miles more (with a pretty hefty laptop and clothes in my backpack). Of course this is on a fixed gear (GT Tequesta).

So after that, the big running workouts this week were

• Wed - 13 miles in just under 2 hours. As I recall, I picked the pace up the last 4 miles or so. I'd like to get this to 14 miles next week.
  
• Fri - 2 x 3 miles, averaging 8:01 pace. I'm generally pleased with this pace and hope to improve on this gradually.
  
• Sat - Short hill repeat workout. I didn't want to wear myself out half a day after the Fri workout.
  
• Sun - 11 mile fartlek run on roads with 2 x 1 mile in the middle at 7:05 and 7:08. This is new. I think I can add a few more intervals eventually.

The 2 hour run has been a good preparation for the TVR in the past so that's the over-distance run, the tempo workout on Friday s/b basically race pace, and then I have fartlek intervals at faster than race pace. So I think this is a pretty good mix. I think I'll stay with this basic set until TVR (possibly with some more easy runs and another hill workout), then maybe switch into a marathon or ultra-marathon mix.